The cabin was unlighted when Jason came in sight of it and apprehension
straightway seized him; so that he broke into a run, but stopped at the
gate and crept slowly to the porch and almost on tiptoe opened the
door. The fire was low, but the look of things was unchanged, and on
the kitchen table he saw his cold supper laid for him. His mother had
maybe gone over the ridge for some reason to stay all night, so he
gobbled his food hastily and, still uneasy, put forth for Mavis's cabin
over the hill. That cabin, too, was dark and deserted, and he knew now
what had happened--that blast of the horn was a summons to a dance
somewhere, and his mother and Steve had answered and taken Mavis with
them; so the boy sat down on the porch, alone with the night and the
big still dark shapes around him. It would not be very pleasant for him
to follow them--people would tease him and ask him troublesome
questions. But where was the dance, and had they gone to it after all?
He rose and went swiftly down the creek. At the mouth of it a light
shone through the darkness, and from it a quavering hymn trembled on
the still air. A moment later Jason stood on the threshold of an open
door and an old couple at the fireplace lifted welcoming eyes.
"Uncle Lige, do you know whar my mammy is?"
The old man's eyes took on a troubled look, but the old woman answered
readily:
"Why, I seed her an' Steve Hawn an' Mavis a-goin' down the crick jest
afore dark, an' yo' mammy said as how they was aimin' to go to yo'
grandpap's."
It was his grandfather's horn, then, Jason had heard. The lad turned to
go, and the old circuit rider rose to his full height.
"Come in, boy. Yo' grandpap had better be a-thinkin' about spreadin'
the wings of his immortal sperit, stid o' shakin' them feet o' clay o'
his'n an' a-settin' a bad example to the young an' errin'!"
"Hush up!" said the old woman. "The Bible don't say nothin' agin a boy
lookin' fer his mammy, no matter whar she is."
She spoke sharply, for Steve Hawn had called her husband out to the
gate, where the two had talked in whispers, and the old man had refused
flatly to tell her what the talk was about. But Jason had turned
without a word and was gone. Out in the darkness of the road he stood
for a moment undecided whether or not he should go back to his lonely
home, and some vague foreboding started him swiftly on down the creek.
On top of a little hill he could see the light in his grandfather's
house, and that far away he could hear the rollicking tune of "Sourwood
Mountain." The sounds of dancing feet soon came to his ears, and from
those sounds he could tell the figures of the dance just as he could
tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned
over the yard fence--looking, listening, thinking. Through the window
he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his
heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like
trip-hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of
shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace, his
grizzled hair tousled and his face red with something more than the
spirits of the dance. The colonel was doing the "grand right and left,"
and his mother was the colonel's partner--the colonel as gallant as
though he were leading mazes with a queen and his mother simpering and
blushing like a girl. In one corner sat Steve Hawn, scowling like a
storm-cloud, and on one bed sat Marjorie and the boy Gray watching the
couple and apparently shrieking with laughter; and Jason wondered what
they could be laughing about. Little Mavis was not in sight. When the
dance closed he could see the colonel go over to the little strangers
and, seizing each by the hand, try to pull them from the bed into the
middle of the floor. Finally they came, and the boy, looking through
the window, and Mavis, who suddenly appeared in the door leading to the
porch, saw a strange sight. Gray took Marjorie's right hand with his
left and put his right arm around her waist and then to the stirring
strains of "Soapsuds Over the Fence" they whirled about the room as
lightly as two feathers in an eddy of air. It was a two-step and the
first round dance ever seen in these hills, and the mountaineers took
it silently, grimly, and with little sign of favor or disapproval,
except from old Jason, who, looking around for Mavis, caught sight of
little Jason's wondering face over her shoulder, for the boy had left
the blurred window-pane and hurried around to the back door for a
better view. With a whoop the old man reached for the little girl, and
gathered in the boy with his other hand.
"Hyeh!" he cried, "you two just git out thar an' shake a foot!"
Little Mavis hung back, but the boy bounded into the middle of the
floor and started into a furious jig, his legs as loose from the hip as
a jumping-jack and the soles and heels of his rough brogans thumping
out every note of the music with astonishing precision and rapidity. He
hardly noticed Mavis at first, and then he began to dance toward her,
his eyes flashing and fixed on hers and his black locks tumbling about
his forehead as though in an electric storm. The master was calling and
the maid answered--shyly at first, coquettishly by and by, and then,
forgetting self and onlookers, with a fiery abandon that transformed
her. Alternately he advanced and she retreated, and when, with a
scornful toss of that night-black head, the boy jigged away, she would
relent and lure him back, only to send him on his way again. Sometimes
they were back to back and the colonel saw that always then the girl
was first to turn, but if the lad turned first, the girl whirled as
though she were answering the dominant spirit of his eyes even through
the back of her head, and, looking over to the bed, he saw his own
little kinswoman answering that same masterful spirit in a way that
seemed hardly less hypnotic. Even Gray's clear eyes, fixed at first on
the little mountain girl, had turned to Jason, but they were undaunted
and smiling, and when Jason, seeing Steve's face at the window and his
mother edging out through the front door, seemed to hesitate in his
dance, and Mavis, thinking he was about to stop, turned panting away
from him, Gray sprang from the bed like a challenging young buck and
lit facing the mountain boy and in the midst of a double-shuffle that
the amazed colonel had never seen outdone by any darkey on his farm.
"Jenny with a ruff-duff a-kickin' up the dust," clicked his feet.
"Juba this and Juba that!
Juba killed a yaller cat!
Juba! Juba!"
"Whoop!" yelled old Jason, bending his huge body and patting his leg
and knee to the beat of one big cowhide boot and urging them on in a
frenzy of delight:
"Come on, Jason! Git atter him, stranger! Whoop her up thar with that
fiddle--Heh--ee--dum dee--eede-eedle--dedee-dee!"
Then there was dancing. The fiddler woke like a battery newly charged,
every face lighted with freshened interest, and only the colonel and
Marjorie showed surprise and mystification. The double-shuffle was
hardly included in the curriculum of the colonel's training school for
a gentleman, and where, when, and how the boy had learned such
Ethiopian skill, neither he nor Marjorie knew. But he had it and they
enjoyed it to the full. Gray's face wore a merry smile, and Jason,
though he was breathing hard and his black hair was plastered to his
wet forehead, faced his new competitor with rallying feet but a sullen
face. "The Forked Deer," "Big Sewell Mountain," and "Cattle Licking
Salt" for Jason, and the back-step, double-shuffle, and "Jim Crow" for
Gray; both improvising their own steps when the fiddler raised his
voice in "Comin' up, Sandy," "Chicken in the Dough-Tray," and "Sparrows
on the Ash-Bank"; and thus they went through all the steps known to the
negro or the mountaineer, until the colonel saw that game little Jason,
though winded, would go on till he dropped, and gave Gray a sign that
the boy's generous soul caught like a flash; for, as though worn out
himself, he threw up his hands with a laugh and left the floor to
Jason. Just then there was the crack of a Winchester from the darkness
outside. Simultaneously, as far as the ear could detect, there was a
sharp rap on a window-pane, as a bullet sped cleanly through, and in
front of the fire old Jason's mighty head sagged suddenly and he
crumbled into a heap on the floor. Arch Hawn had carried his business
deal through. The truce was over and the feud was on again.